We are migrating an old historian into PI. The new structure will make use of templates and consistent asset naming (which don't currently exist in either the source system or the legacy historian). Some users however, are quite attached to the old historian convoluted name (which doesn't necessarily mean anything to business users). They have requested a simple way to search for and identify the new tag / element using the old tag name.

Tag search is not so bad - we can put it in the description or extended description etc. and these appear to return quite quickly. The main issue is with AF for Datalink and PI Vision.

So far the neatest way I can come up with is to put the legacy tag names as a comma separated list at the end of the element description (attribute descriptions are locked by template I think - unless someone knows a way around that?).

This does work (in Datalink and Pi Vision at least), to locate the element. I haven't tried it with 100k elements to see how well it searches.

The drawback is a slightly messy element description, and the users, once having located their element, must still be able to identify which attribute (hopefully the templates make enough sense to make this simple).

Not sure how 'substitution practices' allows me to store and search for my legacy tag name. Am I missing something?The legacy tag name I'm referring to (what the tag used to be called in another system), bears no similarity to the new tag name or to the AF attribute path.

Ok, I thought you meant PI tags when you said "legacy tag names". People might refer to PI tags that way when using AF all the way for accessing data.

But the approach might not differ too much:

The best practice on the subject is to separate the PI tag name description out from the PI Point Data Reference attribute configuration, by adding a child attribute - configured as string, where you store the actual tag name. By doing it this way you'll make the tag name visible for search and for use in client tools. If the tag name is configured directly in the PI Point DR the end-users are not able to see it.

In addition to the "PI Tag Name" child attribute, you can also store the legacy tag name in a similar way. It'll be a string attribute below the PI Point DR attribute.

Hmm, that's too bad. In other clients you're able to search by attribute value, but apparently not in Vision yet.

As I said to Sebastien below, the 2017 R2 version will allow template-defined attributes to deviate from the template on the description field. But you're going to have to wait until the end of the year.

(Btw, the element description field is equally locked to the template, if you're using templates. So that won't work well either)

You are right the attribute description is locked at the template level, and to my knowledge it cannot be edited on an element. The only other workaround I can think of is to create child attributes named as the old tag name. When users search for it they will be able to see what the parent attribute is and find their data. This isn't a great work around but it's the only one I can think of.